11.
Kurash Qwellinir
064
Dawn was little more than a faint smudge of grey in the cleft of the chamber when Clyme entered, bearing treasure-berries for Thomas Covenant.
As Covenant ate, again saving the seeds to scatter later, the Master reported that all of the Feroce had fled the vicinity as soon as their emissaries had emerged from the cave. Now, he announced, Mhornym, Naybahn, and Covenant’s mount were ready to be ridden. Then he stood with Branl while Covenant consumed fruit as salubrious as a feast.
Chewing, Covenant tried not to believe that this was his last meal; that this day would see the end of his renewed life. The end of Linden’s greatest gift—
Ah, hell. He had been alive again for such a short time, and there was so much that he wanted to do; had to do. He owed Linden more than an apology: he owed her his whole world. And he loved this world so fiercely that he hardly knew how to contain the pressure. Twice he had been given the credit for saving the Land; but the truth was that the Land and its people had redeemed him on more occasions and in more ways than he could name. His only real virtue was that he had striven to prove worthy of aliantha and hurtloam. Of Glimmermere and Revelstone and Andelain. High Lord Mhoram and Bannor of the Bloodguard, Triock and Saltheart Foamfollower. Brinn and Cail and the Giants of the Search. Atiaran. Memla. Sunder and Hollian. Broken Lena and her doomed daughter, Elena, whom he and the Dead had sacrificed.
Linden Avery.
He knew that Linden blamed herself for many things. But she was wrong. He wanted to earn the chance to tell her so.
When he was done eating, he rose stiffly to his feet. After two days on horseback and a night on cold stone, his legs and back were aching knots. But he was grateful for that kind of pain. It was ordinary and physical, contradicting his numbness. His leprosy was not the whole truth. As long as he could feel, and care, and resist, he would be more than the sum of his hurts.
After a moment’s hesitation, he stooped to retrieve the strips of Anele’s tunic that he had used to wrap Loric’s krill. Draping cloth over the haft, he gripped it with his halfhand.
In Andelain, he would have failed to draw the knife without help—and there it had been held by wood rather than stone. He might need the aid of Humbled here. But first he wanted to find out what he could do and what he could not.
This, too, was fitting; condign.
However, he did not try to drag the blade straight from the floor. Wiser now, he attempted instead to work the dagger back and forth until it came free.
The krill cut stone with eldritch ease. After only a moment, he was able to pull the weapon loose.
“Well, hell,” he muttered. “I didn’t expect that.”
Briefly he studied the radiant gem as though he sought to see Joan through it; to discern her particular torment. But he could discern only the rare jewel’s light and heat, its participation in wild magic. Shrugging, he flipped fabric around the krill until the whole dagger was covered, shielded, its illumination hidden. Then he tucked the bundle into the waist of his jeans.
In darkness softened only by the distant approach of the sun, he let Branl and Clyme lead him out of his covert.
Certain as stone, the Humbled guided him up the crevice, guarded him from vertigo along the ledge, and watched over him as he clambered up the split to the grassland above the cliff.
There the horses waited. Mhornym and Naybahn greeted their riders with nickering eagerness and trepidation. The destrier rolled its eyes and champed its bit as if only the authority of the Ranyhyn prevented it from charging at Covenant, pounding him into the turf.
Even with his blunt senses, Covenant could see that the Feroce had told the truth. His mount was still weak, worn down by overexertion: the lurker’s creatures had not given it strength. Nevertheless it had recovered its cantankerous spirit.
—caused it to remember what it is. While it lives—
Covenant prayed that the beast would live long enough.
Angrily the horse allowed Covenant to mount. Groaning to himself, he settled his sore muscles into the saddle, took the reins in his maimed fingers. With one hand, he wedged the krill into a more comfortable position. Then he nodded to the Humbled.
“Let’s go. I don’t know how we’re going to do this. But the sooner we get it done, the better.”
The Worm was coming. On some intuitive level, he felt it drawing nearer. Or perhaps what he felt was plain dread. The making of worlds is not accomplished in an instant. It cannot be instantly undone. Sure, he thought sourly. Fine. But what did that mean? How many more days would the Worm spend feeding on the Elohim, devouring them to nourish its search for the EarthBlood?
He wished urgently that he could remember—
As Branl and Clyme turned their Ranyhyn and headed south along the soft slope below the cliffedge, Covenant resisted an impulse to prod his mount into a gallop. By one measure or another, he had lived for something like seven millennia; and now he had no time.
But Mhornym and Naybahn set a rolling pace that the destrier could match without exhausting itself quickly. In spite of his impatience, Covenant tried to tell himself that twenty leagues was trivial for the Ranyhyn—and possible for his mount. Yet his doubts weighed on him; and the gait of the horses felt as sluggish as lead.
Gradually dawn spread out of the east, muted and ruddy, like a forecast of storms. As the sky grew brighter, it took on an ashen hue, the ominous grey of smoke from distant wildfires. For a while as the sun crested the horizon, pale streaks of a more welcome blue showed through the pall. But they were soon occluded, and the whole firmament of the heavens became a sealed lid the color of hammered iron, uneven and depthless.
“This bodes ill, ur-Lord,” Clyme remarked unnecessarily. “The natural currents of sky and wind and weather are disrupted. They foretell the onset of some great violation.”
Instead of responding, Covenant dug in his pockets for treasure-berry seeds. As he and his companions rode, he scattered seeds two or three at a time, sowing the grassland with aliantha like a gesture of defiance. And with every toss, he murmured to the Despiser, Come on. Try me. Whatever happens, you aren’t going to like it.
In this region between the Shattered Hills and the Sunbirth Sea, turf filled the south for several leagues, interrupted only by occasional fissures in the cliff, chewed scallops of erosion, barren stretches where sheets of stone denied incursion. Provender for the horses was plentiful. Water was not.
But as the sun crossed midmorning, the jagged jumble of the Hills crowded closer. Grasses grew more sparsely as the expanse of fertile soil dwindled. The shape of the terrain pushed the riders more and more toward the rim of the precipice.
By some fortuitous quirk of orogeny, however, freshwater springs became easier to find. The same harsh forces which had raised the twists and ridges of the Shattered Hills had also webbed the underlying gutrock with flaws. There ramified splits and gaps had formed the ancient habitations of the jheherrin. The same breaks had supplied the Despiser’s armies with lines of march beneath the Hills. And they had tapped sources of water as old as the world. In hollows like denuded swales, or cracks so thin that they were barely visible, or crude basins as unexpected as fonts, springs bubbled forth. The Ranyhyn and the destrier and their riders could at least quench their thirst. Then the horses cantered on, heading more southeastward now than south, and probing for a path across the increasingly obstructed landscape.
Covenant suspected that they were beginning to curve toward the long promontory which had once held Foul’s Creche; and he still had no idea what he would do if or when he located Joan.
By noon, the horses were forced to move more slowly. There was no more clear ground. The Hills piled ever nearer to the cliff; and the narrowing space between them was cluttered with rubble, or blocked by boulders, or fretted with fissures like veins of erosion pulsing ever deeper into the heart of the Lower Land’s last buttress against the Sea. The Ranyhyn may have been sure-footed enough to run there: Covenant’s mount was not.
And the charger was failing. It had exhausted the energy that it had regained during the night. Now only its belligerence kept it going. When it died, it would perish because it had ruptured its own heart.
That was the gift of the Feroce: a mixed blessing, beneficial for Covenant, but fatal for the poor horse. The innocent, he thought bitterly, were always the first to die. They were the first casualties of every struggle against Despite.
Nevertheless he rode as if he had no pity. Joan had nothing left except the sheer extremity of her pain. If he hoped to face her and live, he would have to do things equally extreme.
Then thrusts of granite pushed the riders within a stone’s throw of the last cliff, and Covenant smelled saltwater; saw the Sunbirth Sea.
The ocean was as grey as the sky, a tainted seethe heaving urgently against the base of the precipice as if it were desperate to break down the Lower Land’s fortifications. No wind lashed the waves: the air seemed preternaturally still, as if the sky were holding its breath. Nevertheless the roll of seas was confused, tossed this way and that by its surge over grim boulders and fraught reefs. Slamming against each other, the wavecrests broke into agitated froth and spray like salt expostulations.
And wherever Covenant looked, the sea was stippled with bursts and splashes as if it were being struck by hail. But there was no hail. Instead he felt an almost subliminal vibration, a mute massive thud like the slow beat of the seafloor’s immersed heart; or like the heavy tread of doom.
Premonitions of vertigo tugged at Covenant’s thoughts; at his stomach. But the knotted bulk of the cliff still stood between him and falling, and he kept his balance.
Time dragged like difficult breathing. For a while, the horses maintained a jolting trot. Then the rimose terrain compelled them to walk. Boulders complicated their path. And with every stride, they were wedged closer to the precipice.
Covenant doubted that his mount would last much longer. He doubted that he would. His trek to Foul’s Creche long ago had taught him that the Hills were a hazardous barrier. And they probably stretched right to the cliffedge. Beyond them, of course, the way was easier. At the base of Ridjeck Thome’s promontory, the Shattered Hills were cut off by cooled lava where Hotash Slay had once moiled and poured. There he would be able to walk. He had done it before. But here—
A glance at the sky told him that midafternoon had passed. Under the loom of the Hills, night would fall early.
He tried to assure himself that he and his companions had made good progress. Certainly the charger had endured more than he could have expected. When he asked the Humbled, however, they informed him that the igneous boundary of Hotash Slay was still two leagues away.
Meanwhile his mount was stumbling, unable to drag its hooves clear of the uneven ground. And the gap between the sudden upward lurch of the Hills and the sheer plummet of the cliff had become little more than a taunt. On foot, Covenant could have crossed it in four strides. For safety’s sake, Branl had to ride ahead of him on one side, Clyme behind him on the other.
He remembered nothing about this part of the coast. Living, he had never been here before. The jheherrin had guided him with Foamfollower beneath the Shattered Hills from a different direction. He and his last friend in that time, the last of the Unhomed, had bypassed most of the bitter maze; had emerged from the passages of the soft ones only a short distance from Hotash Slay. But other things he could not forget—
Foamfollower in vast agony carrying him across the boil of lava. Foamfollower sinking horribly beneath the molten stone. Foamfollower reappearing from his caamora in time to clear Covenant’s way into Foul’s Creche.
Foamfollower laughing with unfettered joy at Lord Foul’s malice.
Ah, God. The Giants. They were all of them miracles, every one whom Covenant had known: Pitchwife and the First of the Search, Grimmand Honninscrave and Cable Seadreamer, the Ironhand and her comrades: they were all instances of the transcending valor that made the Land and the Earth precious. Too precious to be surrendered. Joy is in the ears that hear—Any world which nurtured such beings deserved to live. Any world which gave birth to people like Berek Heartthew and High Lord Mhoram, Sunder and Hollian. Any world so rich in wonders that it could transform the dark Weird of the ur-viles.
This world deserved to live.
Engrossed in remembrance and useless remonstration, Covenant was surprised when the horses stopped.
They had come to an impasse. Directly ahead of them, a jut of stone like a plane of slate taller than one Giant standing on another’s shoulders blocked the way. It reached from the louring bulk of the nearest hill to the precipice barely two paces away on Covenant’s left. Shaded from the westering sun, he and the Humbled were shrouded in shadows and gloom. But beyond the barrier, cliffs and crags like clenched knuckles curved crookedly from the southeast out into the wan sunlight of late afternoon. They towered higher than his recollection of them. At their far end, he glimpsed the jagged edge where the collapse of Foul’s Creche had rent the tip of the promontory, sending uncounted thousands of tons of granite and obsidian and malachite into the insatiable hunger of the Sunbirth. And far below him—
A shock like a jolt of lightning ran through him. Bloody damnation!
Far below him, a simple spin and topple over the precipice, seas no longer thundered against the base of the cliff. When he first looked down, clinging fervidly to his saddle, he saw no breakers at all. The whole of the ocean seemed to have vanished, leaving slick rocks, splintered menhirs, and knife-sharp boulders like the detritus of landslides exposed to the air. Among them, reefs like the spines of cripples reticulated the expanse. Grey water lay in pools that trembled at the slow thud of imponderable heartbeats as though even salt and the smallest creatures of the sea understood fear. Patches of cloacal mud seemed to shiver in anticipation, reeking of ancient death and rot. Draped over and around the chaos of stones and reefs, strands of kelp sprawled as if they were already dying.
But when Covenant raised his eyes, cast his gaze farther, he saw the Sunbirth in retreat. Perhaps half a league from the cliff, waves still toppled onto the ocean floor. But they were ebbing. Ebbing dramatically. With every fall and return, they withdrew as if they were being sucked away. As if they were being swallowed by the depths of the world.
Faint with distance, they sounded vulnerable, as forlorn as a plaint.
Instinctively Covenant understood. His mind reeled, and vertigo was an acute teacher.
Somewhere scores or hundreds of leagues out to sea, a shock like a split in the Earth’s crust had begun to gather a tsunami.
The riders had stopped on level stone like a small clearing between the impassable hill and the fatal cliff. There the destrier stood with its legs splayed, gasping out its life. Ahead of and behind the beast, Mhornym and Naybahn fretted, tossing their heads and stamping their hooves.
Had they misjudged the path to their destination? Was that even possible?
Gritting his teeth in a wasted attempt to keep his voice steady, Covenant demanded, “Are we lost? We can’t be. The Ranyhyn don’t get lost.”
“Ur-Lord, we are not,” Branl replied inflexibly. “Our passage lies there.” He pointed at the rockface behind Covenant.
Covenant twisted in his seat, looked where Branl pointed.
The Master was right. A dozen or so paces behind Clyme and Mhornym, a crack opened the wall of stone: a way into the maze of the Shattered Hills. The Ranyhyn knew it was there. And they could thread the maze: Covenant was sure of that. They could navigate time within caesures. Yet they had walked past it.
They must have done so deliberately.
Fearing the answer, he asked, “I don’t understand. Why aren’t we moving?”
His horse was done. But he could still walk.
“Ur-Lord,” Clyme answered without expression, “Mhornym and Naybahn choose to halt here. We are not Ramen. We do not discern the thoughts of Ranyhyn. But we speculate.
“It may be that we near our goal. It may be that we do not. We perceive neither your former mate, who is unknown to us, nor vile turiya Herem, with whom we are well familiar. They lie beyond the reach of our senses. However, we have no measure for the Raver’s awareness. Perhaps Corruption’s servant descries our approach. Perhaps your former mate does likewise.
“In addition”—Clyme appeared to hesitate momentarily—“we believe that we have felt the exertion of wild magic. Of this we are uncertain. The sensation is too distant for clarity. Nonetheless it suggests that we draw nigh to your former mate. For this reason, we conclude that turiya Herem and his victim are indeed aware of us”—the Humbled inclined his head toward Covenant—“or of High Lord Loric’s krill.
“Therefore, ur-Lord, we surmise that the Ranyhyn fear an ambush. Among the Shattered Hills, we will be exposed at every moment to an onset of skest.”
“But we’re trapped here,” protested Covenant. If skest came pouring from that cleft into the Hills, he and the Humbled and the horses would be caught against the slate barricade. They would have nowhere to run—and no room to defend themselves.
“Ur-Lord,” Clyme stated, “I repeat that we speculate. We are not Ramen. Yet we conceive that perhaps the Ranyhyn await the Feroce, the fulfillment of your alliance.”
His lack of inflection seemed to imply that he considered the word of the lurker’s creatures worthless.
“Hellfire!” Covenant made no effort to mask his frustration. “What’re we supposed to do in the meantime? Just stand here? My horse is going to collapse. I’m surprised it isn’t already dead.
“I’m useless against skest.”
Even with Loric’s dagger, he could only face one creature at a time. And if any drop or splash of acid touched him—
“You deemed the Feroce honest, ur-Lord,” remarked Branl. “You were not compelled to their alliance. You elected to grant your trust, disregarding the lurker’s enduring malevolence.”
I know that, Covenant thought. I knew it was a risk.
But before he could muster a response, Branl stiffened: a subtle intensification.
“Skest advance upon us,” the Master announced. “They are nigh.” A moment later, he added, “They appear to have no direct path. They follow the dictates of the maze. Its intricacy delays them. Nonetheless they come.”
Damnation! Twisting in his seat, Covenant looked past Clyme for some sign of the Feroce. But of course the senses of the Humbled would recognize the lurker’s creatures before Covenant spotted them. Briefly he studied the hill-wall beside him; but he saw no hope there. Its outward face was too steep, too smooth. Given time, Branl and Clyme might contrive to scale it. Covenant could not.
Wincing, he glanced over the cliff; tried to imagine a descent. If he abandoned the Ranyhyn, they might have time to escape.
Then vertigo hit him, a blow to the stomach. He jerked his eyes away.
“Say something,” he panted at his companions. “Tell me what to do. Tell me what we’re going to do.”
They were Haruchai. As far as he was concerned, no Haruchai had ever failed him. Not even when Bannor had refused to accompany him to Foul’s Creche.
Rigid as rock, Clyme began, “We will trust—”
He may have meant the Ranyhyn, or the Feroce, or Covenant himself; but Covenant no longer heard anything. Through the cloth covering the krill, he felt a sudden throb of heat.
Joan! Instinctively he flinched. His whole body tried to squirm away from the dagger.
An instant passed before he realized that the rush of heat was not as fierce as he had expected. He could bear it.
Ah, hell. Was she simply unsure of her target? Was she too badly broken to focus her force when she could not sense his touch on the krill? Or was she getting weaker—?
His own questions distracted him. A moment passed before he felt crawling on the sensitive parts of his skin; hiving insects; fornication. Things that could bite and sting were on his scalp, under his clothes, in his boots.
With no more warning than that, a caesure erupted above and beyond the slate barrier.
The Fall was comparatively minor, a mere flick of wild magic and chaos no more than five paces wide. And it had missed Covenant and his companions. At once, it began to lurch away, chewing westward through stone and time into the confusions of the Shattered Hills. Nevertheless it was as destructive as a hurricane in the substance of the world. Centuries or millennia were superimposed and shredded until the rock exploded, torn apart by the instantaneous migraine of its own slow life. Shards and splinters were flung in all directions like shrapnel, cutting as knives, fatal as bullets.
They may have struck Covenant, pierced him, ripped through him. They may have killed the Humbled and the Ranyhyn and the destrier. But he did not feel them. As soon as he glanced into the savage kaleidoscope of the caesure, he lost his inward footing and slipped—
Oh, God! Not now! Not now!
—into the broken residue of his memories.
After that, he stood where Ridjeck Thome had once held the apex of the promontory and watched time run backward, incrementally unmaking seven thousand years of ruin.
Ages were erased in instants. Instants were ages. At first, he saw only the ponderous accumulation as a mountain of rubble undid its own erosion beneath the unremitting pressures of the sea. Sand gathered into stones. Stones lost their smoothness, whetted their edges. Reefs melted away around them. But memories were also quick, as swift as thought: they could become more rapid than his ability to comprehend them. The wreckage grew in bulk. At the same time, its area contracted as boulders as big as houses, mansions, temples piled themselves on top of each other. A vast weight of seawater collapsed like an eruption in reverse while riven stones thrust their heads and shoulders above the surface of the waves.
First one at a time, then in a mighty rush, the stones sprang upward to resume their ancient places in the promontory.
In a reality which he no longer inhabited, Covenant observed his mount’s panic. Terror summoned its final vestiges of strength. He felt it lunge for the edge of the cliff, bearing him with it. But he could not react. He was hardly able to care. His spirit lived elsewhere.
Instead of fearing for his life, or hauling on the destrier’s reins, or shouting for help, he watched the torn tip of the promontory and then Foul’s Creche rebuild themselves around him.
Within moments, the Despiser’s delved dwelling was complete, immense and immaculate and empty, flawless and useless in every detail except for the jagged jaws which formed Lord Foul’s throne.
Covenant stood in the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome. The Despiser was there. Before him squatted the dire mass of the Illearth Stone. Beside the Stone, Covenant’s slain self cowered on its knees, craven and powerless. Nearby Foamfollower endured his own helplessness, his final agony.
Lord Foul was nothing more than a bitter shape in the air, a shadow reeking of attar. But his eyes were as eager as fangs, carious and yellow. They seemed to grip the kneeling Covenant’s soul, avid for despair.
Begone, spectre, the Despiser said in Covenant’s mind. You have no place here. You do not exist. Your time will never come.
That voice violated time and memory. It came from a different version of existence, a brief disruption enabled by the caesure. Lord Foul then had not known that Covenant’s spirit was watching now from its remembered place within the Arch of Time. The Despiser had believed himself triumphant.
Nevertheless the intruded command banished Covenant. The thronehall and Ridjeck Thome vanished. Instead he found himself far down in the Lost Deep, far down in the Earth’s past, looking sadly at the first spasms of the bane’s horror and bereavement as She realized that She had been tricked; snared.
Eventually that horror and bereavement would produce the tectonic upheaval which sheared the Upper Land away from the Lower. It would cause the faults in Gravin Threndor which allowed the Soulsease to pour into the bowels of the mountain. But not yet. At this moment, Covenant could only watch and grieve as She Who Must Not Be Named howled rage at Her betrayer.
It was a hurtful memory in every particular, crowded with pain and foreknowledge. But it was also a relief. Lord Foul did not disturb the integrity of this remembered fragment. Perhaps he could not.
As the destrier plunged over the cliff, Covenant saw every cruel span of the fall below him; felt crushing death in all of its vertiginous seduction. He wanted to close his eyes; but his body had no will of its own, and his mind was absent.
Nevertheless a part of him recognized the impact as Branl landed on the charger’s haunches. Branl’s hands gripped Covenant’s shoulders like fetters, manacles. In the same motion, the Master heaved himself backward, hauling Covenant with him.
For a while, Covenant flickered like a chiaroscuro through fractured scenes, forgotten events. He saw Brinn give battle to the Guardian of the One Tree. He watched Kasreyn of the Gyre forge an eldritch sword to use against the Sandgorgons until he acquired the lore and found the materials to perfect Sandgorgons Doom. Impotent and proud, Covenant studied Linden’s fight for her life, and for Jeremiah’s, under Melenkurion Skyweir.
His mount’s plunge had become a plummet. They had fallen too far. Even Branl’s supreme strength did not suffice to regain the rim of the precipice.
But Clyme was ready. Outstretched on the stone, he reached down, snatched a handhold in the back of Branl’s tunic.
The vellum should have torn. It did not.
An instant later, Branl released one hand from Covenant to catch at Clyme’s forearm. Together the Humbled wrenched Covenant back to the cliffedge; pulled him to safety. There he sprawled limp on level stone as if nothing had happened.
Too much was happening. Blundering along flaws and crevices, he tried to find a fragment of memory that would save him. Skest emerged from the cleft, gleaming vilely in the shrouded gloom. He saw the Theomach divert Roger’s efforts to take Linden and the croyel to the time of Damelon Giantfriend’s arrival on Rivenrock. He heard the Elohim pride themselves on their uninvolvement. At least a score of skest thronged out of the maze. More were coming. He saw Joan appear, charred by lightning, on the promontory of Foul’s Creche. He watched turiya Raver pounce on her, into her; watched the Raver compel her to summon Roger, Jeremiah, and Linden. Because they were dead in their former lives, they would never escape this reality.
Without hesitation, Clyme left Branl and Covenant. He flung himself at the corner where the blockade of slate joined the sheer hill. Somehow he wedged or clawed his way upward. When he reached the top of the slate, he straddled it.
Branl lifted Covenant; threw him upward. Clyme snagged one of Covenant’s slack arms, nearly jerked it from its socket. While Clyme settled Covenant beside him, Branl climbed to join them.
Undefended, Mhornym and Naybahn faced the corrosive skest.
Blood pulsed from a cut on Covenant’s forehead. He recalled striking his head on the edge of a table. Blood formed trails around his eyes, ran down his cheeks, dripped from his jaw. A gash along his ribs throbbed. The side of Branl’s neck had been torn: a shallow cut. Clyme wore several minor hurts. The barricade must have shielded them from the caesure’s worst violence.
Alone within himself, Covenant strove to locate a recollection that might affect his plight.
Instead he stumbled into Joan’s recent past, perhaps moments before his resurrection. She looked worse than he had ever seen her in life: a madwoman unkempt and tattered, gap-toothed with malnutrition, no longer capable of focusing her eyes; so utterly frail that she required a throng of acid-creatures and much of turiya’s savagery to keep her alive. For some reason, she was clambering, friable as glass, down the granitic wreckage where Foul’s Creche had once stood. By weak increments painful to behold, she descended toward the Sunbirth Sea. Was she afraid? Trying to escape her own future? Did she think that turiya Herem would allow her to drown among the waves? Or was she seeking older stone, more fundamental rocks and boulders which she could then destroy to unleash greater caesures?
The skest massed at the opening of the maze. But they did not move to assail the Ranyhyn. Perhaps they were content to prevent escape. Perhaps their master, the Raver, had assured them that Joan would strike again soon.
Remembering her, Covenant tried to call out. Stop this! Please stop! You’ve already suffered too much! But of course she could not hear him. He was a wraith, a figment of memory, no longer a participant in the Arch: too insubstantial to intrude on her derangement and turiya’s possession.
Grimacing in dismay, he turned aside, staggered into another fissure, and found himself in Andelain.
Not in Andelain itself: not among the tangible Hills. Instead he stood beside the krill, beside the withered stump of Caer-Caveral’s passing, within an image of Andelain, a semblance composed of recollection and symbolism. And he was not alone.
Berek Halfhand was with him, Heartthew and Lord-Fatherer. Loric Vilesilencer, creator of the krill. Saltheart Foamfollower, who had laughed, and Cable Seadreamer, who could not. Mhoram Variol-son, representing the later generation of Lords. Cail of the Haruchai. Jerrick of Vidik Amar, wrapped in shadows, who had shared his magicks with a-Jeroth, and had watched in shattering consternation as a-Jeroth had brought forth quellvisks. The Theomach, alone of the Insequent, clad in cerements after his defeat by Brinn.
Covenant remembered this. He and these spirits had gathered together in an effort to imagine or devise some form of salvation.
They all deferred to him. His was the only soul unconstrained by the strictures of Time.
But he could only recall pieces of their counsel.
He did not know why the skest waited. He did not care.
Branl shook him. “Ur-Lord. You must return. There will be another Fall. We cannot ward you. And we must not abandon the Ranyhyn to this death.”
The injuries of the Humbled were trivial. They would heal. The wound of Covenant’s mind would not.
It is hazardous, Berek said. Hazardous beyond measure. There is the breaking of Laws to consider. There is the Worm.
I know, Covenant said. And Kevin’s Dirt. And Kastenessen. And Cail’s son.
A litany more heinous than any number of skest.
The lealty of my people, Cail added. They are obdurate and mistaken. Also there are skurj. There are Sandgorgons. Kastenessen rules the one. Samadhi Sheol entices the other.
Dull-eyed and unblinking, Covenant saw small fires shine greenly in the twilight cast by the Shattered Hills. The Feroce had come at last. With emerald lambent in their hands, they approached from the northwest, beyond the skest.
The skest seemed to be waiting for them. For an alliance of one kind or another to be revealed. But did they believe that promises would be kept between Covenant and the lurker of the Sarangrave? Or did they expect the sundered descendants of the jheherrin to reunite, skest with Feroce? Did they believe that the lurker would betray Covenant?
I include the Giant named Lostson and Longwrath, Foamfollower said. He is ruled by a geas born of a dire bargain and cannot free himself.
Terrible banes are immured among the bones of Gravin Threndor, Loric said. Even the Illearth Stone must be considered.
Branl or Clyme should have taken the krill. They could use it. But perhaps they suspected that the grasp of any hand on Loric’s dagger might catch Joan’s attention; draw another caesure.
A white gold wielder is possessed by a Raver, the Theomach said. That alone suffices to unloose a world of woe.
I know, Covenant said again.
This whole discussion had taken place years ago. It was only a memory. But it had more power over him than any facet of his physical present. He needed to remember it. Parts of it might rescue him.
Parts were already irretrievable.
My friend of old, Mhoram said. It falls to me to speak of your own son. He lacks Esmer’s unfathomable powers, but also Esmer’s self-torment. His is an unrelieved darkness, born of abandonment and nurtured by Despite. He will do much which Esmer would not.
Also, as the Theomach has said, there is the woman who turned from you, your son’s mother. She trusts to him, though she has given him naught. She is a rightful wielder of white gold, yes—and possessed by turiya Herem, yes. She will oppose you. Yet she is broken beyond sufferance. Her need for mercy is absolute.
Also there is Linden Avery. There is her child freely chosen. None here can declare which of them bears the greater burden of pain. None here possess the wisdom to estimate the outcome of his loss, or the worth of his recovery. We can be certain only that the Despiser craves him urgently.
Like the surge of the departing sea, the Feroce came upon the skest. Hand-held fires like reminders of the Illearth Stone met living green vitriol, another echo of the Stone’s evil.
Without sounds or battle cries, without any sign of clashing, they began to obliterate each other. Feroce flared and were consumed. Skest slumped into puddles that gnawed like infections at the stone. Gouts and flames slashed the premature dusk.
Foamfollower looked at Seadreamer. When Seadreamer nodded, Foamfollower said, You ask that we repose faith in Linden Avery the Chosen. We are content to do so. We are Giants. We cannot do otherwise.
I have received the gift of her acquaintance, said the Theomach. I also am content.
She will sacrifice the Earth entire for her son, Loric said. And for you, Timewarden. I am not content. We must seek another path.
I know, Covenant said a third time. She’ll do anything for Jeremiah. She’ll do anything for me. That’s the risk we have to take. You were never in her situation. Are you sure you wouldn’t have done as much for Kevin, if you ever had the chance?
Thereafter Loric was silent.
An eerie battle burned and spat among the descendants of the jheherrin. It was as soundless as a charade. Nevertheless the lurker’s creatures and turiya Raver’s died in each encounter.
The lurker was keeping its promise. Sacrificing its worshippers. For Covenant.
He did not know how many Feroce had come. He did not know how many skest waited in the passages of the maze. But he knew the acid of turiya Herem’s servants. Before long, the entire expanse of stone between his perch and the advancing Feroce would begin to crumble. If the cliff’s rim did not fall away at once, it would collapse under any weight.
The Ranyhyn may have already lost their only escape. Clyme and Branl might never be able to reach the cleft into the Shattered Hills.
This, then, is my counsel, Cail said. I speak as one who also has a son, and who is grieved by his wrongs. We must abide by the judgment of the Ranyhyn. They are an embodiment of the Land. We are not. And they are attuned to the Law of Time. While we are in accord, their discernment will guide us well.
The caesure had left a hollow behind the sheet of slate. Reaching back, Branl found chunks of stone fresh from the Fall’s vehemence. Swift and certain, he threw them at the skest.
And that’s not all, Covenant said. I’ve seen things some of you haven’t. Sure, the Haruchai serve Lord Foul. But they might surprise you. They might surprise him. If anything can sway them, the Ranyhyn can. Or the Ramen.
Branl’s aim was unerring. With every cast, he ruptured one or more of the skest. The skin of its life tore, spilling sickness to the ground. Rank vitriol steamed on the stone; corroded it; left it pitted and fragile.
The Ranyhyn heeded his example. Shards and scree littered the space between them and the struggle, Feroce against skest. Turning, Naybahn and Mhornym used their hind legs to kick stones at the skest. Fatal as missiles, chunks of rock hurtled among the creatures; slew several of them.
Then Branl appeared to realize that he was hastening the ruin of the cliffedge. The Ranyhyn would be trapped. They would be stuck where they stood until they died.
Glaring, Branl ceased his attacks.
Mhornym and Naybahn did not.
Clyme shook Covenant again, harder this time. “Ur-Lord!” His severity was a slap which Covenant could not feel. “Doom gathers below us. We must act. We must act now!”
My counsel is of another kind, the Theomach said. Time is the keystone of life, just as wild magic is the keystone of Time. It is Time which is endangered. The path to its preservation lies through Time.
And Berek said, The Theomach has been my guide and teacher. His counsel is mine as well.
There, Covenant thought. That was the answer.
He lost it immediately. Eager to understand, he tripped into another fissure. Instead of standing in Andelain, he wandered uselessly through the rich twilight beneath the canopy of the One Forest. He remembered the lazy hum of insects, the mellifluous evensong of birds; the fecund scents of loam and moss and ferns, natural decay, ripe growth.
But he did not lose everything.
Joan had her wedding band. She was using wild magic against the Land. It could be used against her.
Without warning, Clyme struck Covenant, an open-handed blow that snapped his head to the side, sent shocks down his spine.
Around him, the One Forest seemed to ripple as though every tree and leaf and breeze had become water. Monarchs which had held their ground for hundreds of years shimmered like mirages.
The Feroce may have been winning. They appeared to outnumber the skest.
Turiya could send more. No doubt he had already done so.
With an effort like a rush of vertigo, Covenant moaned, “Again.”
Clyme did not hesitate. A second jolt caught Covenant’s head from the opposite side. Repercussions rattled his vertebrae.
It was too late. Covenant could not fight the skest. He could not touch the krill. Not yet.
He had to try something else.
“Hit me again.”
This time, Clyme punched the cut in the center of Covenant’s forehead.
Hellfire! That one hurt!
While new blood streamed into Covenant’s eyes, he found his way back to himself.
Scrubbing at his face with both hands, he panted, “That’s enough. I can’t take any more. Next time, try the krill.”
It might sever him from the past.
But he did not pause to thank the Humbled. As soon as he could see, he yelled at the Feroce, “A path! We need a path!”
If the clifftop could still hold anything heavier than the turmoil of small creatures—
The lurker’s servants must have heard him. Mute as martyrs in the apotheosis of their devotion, they adjusted their approach. Instead of pressing themselves and dying against all of the skest at once, they shifted to form a wedge.
Arranged like ur-viles or Waynhim, they began to kill and perish their way into the mass of acid-creatures.
“Now!” Covenant told Clyme and Branl. “I have an idea!”
He was closed to the senses of the Haruchai. They could not hear his thoughts; could hardly recognize his emotions. Nevertheless Branl responded as though he understood. Quick as intuition, he dropped from the slate; landed between Naybahn and Mhornym, where the stone was still solid. A heartbeat later, Clyme lifted Covenant, tossed him into Branl’s arms. While Branl set Covenant on his feet, Clyme jumped down to join them.
Already most of the Feroce were gone, consumed in fire and vitriol. Many of the skest had fallen, reeking as their spent lives dissolved stone, ate chunks out of the clifftop. Wherever they died, they left deep pits and gouges.
“All right,” Covenant muttered as if he were Linden. “Let’s see if this works.”
He took the krill from his waist. Careful not to touch any part of the dagger, he flipped its covering aside until he had exposed the gem.
A blare of radiance stung his sight. It swept back the gloom. The jewel was a cynosure of argence. In that narrow place, it effaced imminent night.
Blinking as if his eyes were still full of blood, he saw skest wheel away from the few remaining Feroce. Turiya’s creatures knew the krill; or they remembered it. They or their distant ancestors had encountered it in the Sarangrave. Now they mewled like frightened young. They flinched and cowered. Then they began to retreat.
As if they shared one mind, a dozen skest all crowded toward the cleft and the maze at the same time.
Yes.
The Feroce let them go. Only five of the lurker’s worshippers still lived. They clung desperately to the green fires in their hands and trembled, shaken by atavistic dread.
When the skest were gone, the Feroce came a step or two nearer. Standing on gutted granite, they stopped. Their small forms seemed to ache with fatigue and defeat.
“We are weak,” they said, timorous as if they deserved punishment. “We have come too far from our waters. Distance frays the majesty of our High God. The skest are too many. We cannot quell them.”
Impassively Branl stated, “The skest will await us among the passages of the Shattered Hills.” With both hands, he stroked Naybahn’s neck. He may have been apologizing.
Or grieving.
Covenant’s jaws knotted. “And they’ll still be afraid.” Flanked by the Humbled and the Ranyhyn, he studied his straits. “They aren’t the real problem.” He knew how to reach Joan. “First we have to get there.” With his free hand, he indicated the eaten stone between him and the cleft; the only available entrance to the maze. The rock still steamed and stank as lingering acid bit deeper into its substance. “And we have to think of a way to save the Ranyhyn.”
The clifftop looked too badly gnawed to support him. It would never hold Naybahn or Mhornym.
Nevertheless Branl left Covenant’s side at once. Pressing himself to the hill-wall opposite the precipice, he side-stepped carefully toward the cleft.
Now Covenant saw that a narrow span of stone at the base of the hill had been left undamaged. It was too slim for the Ranyhyn, but it accommodated Branl.
When the Master reached the cleft, he glanced inward, nodded his satisfaction at the retreat of the skest. Then he told Covenant, “Our path is secure.” Frowning, he added, “It will not serve the Ranyhyn.”
Pale in the krill’s vividness, the flames of the Feroce guttered, timid and apprehensive. After a moment, they sighed, “Stone lives. Its life is slow. Its pain is slow. But it lives. It remembers.
“We have failed our High God. We must attempt amends. We will ask the stone to remember its strength. It has been ravaged. It has felt havoc. But if its life is slow, its awareness of harm is also slow. Its memory of strength persists.”
Covenant stared at the creatures. What, remember its strength? After it was broken? The damage to the stone was severe. And he could discern no power capable of mending rock from the Feroce; no power of any kind apart from the frantic dance of their flames.
But the creatures did not wait for a response. Trembling, they moved closer to each other, formed a tight circle. As they had done once before, they joined their hands, clasped their fires together. They may have been praying—
Gradually their strange energies found new force. The nauseating hue of the Illearth Stone grew brighter. It etched itself against the hot silver of the krill.
By some means, they had caused Covenant’s lost mount to recall its own nature earlier. They had restored the destrier’s contentious spirit.
Maybe—
Covenant saw nothing change. His senses were too dull to identify the effect wrought by the Feroce—if they achieved any effect at all. Clyme and Branl watched in silence.
But the Ranyhyn reacted as if they understood the Feroce. They jerked up their heads, shook their manes, snorted fiercely. Emerald and argent contradicted each other in the wide glare of their eyes. Trumpeting defiance, they flung themselves forward; burst into a gallop.
They managed one long stride on undamaged stone—and another, foreshortened. Then they sprang as far as they could stretch out across the wrecked rock.
Both of them, when one would have been too heavy.
Covenant forgot to breathe; forgot to blink at the blood still oozing from his forehead.
At the limit of their leap, their forelegs struck the surface. It crumbled instantly. Of course it did. Much of it had been corroded to the consistency of rotten wood. The rest had lost its foundations. Nevertheless Naybahn and Mhornym snatched their hind legs under them and tried to spring again.
They almost succeeded.
Almost.
But the stone had been too badly chewed. A section of the clifftop collapsed beneath the horses. Chunks of rock fell like jagged gobbets of the Earth’s flesh.
Frantically Naybahn and Mhornym scrambled at the failing slope. Somehow their hooves found purchase. Straining, they lunged forward onto stone as ruined and ruinous as the rock that they had crumbled.
Beyond them, the flames of the Feroce rose like screams into the air.
More of the surface broke. More of it fell away. Yet the Ranyhyn were faster—or the invocation of the Feroce had taken hold. Together Naybahn and Mhornym outran the collapse.
Granite wreckage plummeted. A hungry plunge snapped at their heels as they neared the lurker’s creatures. But there, impossibly, the surface became stronger. The Feroce stood where the greatest number of skest had died, yet the clifftop clung to its former endurance. When the Ranyhyn surged past the creatures, they were able to truly gallop.
“Damnation!” Covenant gasped. “Hell and blood! I would not have believed—”
A moment later, the horses reached solid ground. At once, they skidded to a halt, neighing triumph.
The Feroce unclosed their hands; let their peculiar magicks subside. Their small forms slumped as if they were exhausted.
While he caught his breath, Covenant repeated to himself, Damnation! I would not have believed it. But he did not pause for astonishment. Relief only whetted his vulnerability. A large portion of the clifftop was gone. Against the foot of the Shattered Hills lay a gap as inviting and murderous as open jaws. And the drop called to him.
Vertigo squirmed through him. Ruling himself with curses, he shouted to the Feroce, “Tell your High God! If it can be done, I’ll save him. I’ll save the Land. And thank him for me. He keeps his promises!”
The Feroce looked too weary to respond; and he did not wait for them. Aiming his voice past the creatures, he ordered the Ranyhyn, “Don’t try to follow us! Find some other path. I’m counting on you! We’re going to need you.”
Under his breath, he added, “If I don’t get us killed first.”
Hurrying, he turned to Clyme. “We have to reach Branl, and I can’t do it. No way in hell.” His voice shook as if he were feverish. “I can’t keep my damn balance.” At one time, he had found calm in the eye of a whirling confluence of possibility and impossibility: he could not do so here. “But it’s worse than that. There’s something in me that wants to fall.” His inner Despiser? His yearning to surrender his burdens? “If the two of you can’t hold me, we might as well just jump.”
In the light of Loric’s dagger, Clyme’s expression looked subtly scornful. “Secure the krill, ur-Lord,” he said as if Covenant’s alarm did not merit reassurance. “We will require both of your arms.”
“Right.” Covenant tightened his grip on himself. “Of course you can hold me. What was I thinking?”
In a rush, he swung the dagger so that Anele’s cloth wrapped itself around the metal, masked the bright gem.
At once, darkness enclosed him. Its suddenness sealed him away from everything except the avid gulf. He could not even see Clyme. The Master was only a sensation of rigidity at his side. Nevertheless Covenant tucked the krill into his jeans.
Then his eyes began to adjust. The precipice grew wider, darker; more compulsory. The faint flames of the Feroce did not shed enough light to protect him. Clyme became a more substantial avatar of night.
While Covenant’s head reeled, Clyme grasped his left arm and pushed him firmly toward the hard wall of the hill.
Instinctively he wanted to resist. Vertigo sang to him, as siren and alluring as the music of merewives. Seductions spun in his head, his stomach, his muscles. Did he trust the Haruchai? He had always said that he did. Put up or shut up.
When his shoulder touched stone, he jammed his face and chest against it; clung to it. Not this time, he swore at his spinning mind; or at the Despiser. You can’t have me now. Wait your damn turn.
Out of the dark, Branl said, “Extend your arm, ur-Lord. We will support you. You will not fall.”
The appalled voice of Covenant’s alarm sneered, Oh, sure. Extend my arm. Like that’s going to happen. But he was already reaching for Branl. He had come too far and learned too much: his fears did not rule him.
A hand as trustworthy as granite gripped his wrist, rock that defied corrosion. Between them, Branl and Clyme urged him along the base of the hill.
The cleft was millennia away. Creeping on the verge of panic, Covenant would need an age of the Earth to cross the distance. But the Humbled were oblivious to the impossibility of their task. Ignoring the frenetic stutter of Covenant’s heart, they impelled him toward the crack in the hill; the entrance to the maze.
When he stood at last between solid walls with gutrock under his boots, he staggered in relief; nearly stumbled to his knees. Still his companions upheld him.
Here there was no light at all. The drained flames of the Feroce did not reach into the cleft.
Gasping for balance, Covenant panted, “Remind the Ranyhyn. Insist, if you have to. They can’t follow us. We need them.” Then he managed to add, “Thank you.”
“We are the Humbled,” Branl answered impassively, “Masters and Haruchai. We do not require gratitude.
“On the Plains of Ra, the Ranyhyn reared to you. They will heed your wishes.”
“In that case—” Gradually the gyre in Covenant’s head eased. By increments, his nerves released their terror and yearning. The Haruchai feared grief. It was their one maiming weakness. Naturally they did not want gratitude. “We should keep moving. I need a clearing of some kind. A little open ground. Maybe we can find it before the skest come at us again.”
Storms of impatience and dread brewed in the background of his thoughts. But he did not protest when Clyme and Branl remained still. He was not steady enough to walk yet.
They waited until he was able to stand without their support; until he took a couple of steps into the cleft and turned to face them. Then Clyme asked, “Ur-Lord, what is your intent? The skest await us. A Fall may strike at any moment. Your former mate remains beyond our discernment. We will be better able to serve you if we comprehend your purpose.”
Covenant cursed to himself. Summoning as much honesty as he could bear, he admitted, “I’m afraid to say it out loud. You told me you don’t know how far turiya’s senses reach. If he hears me—if he even guesses—” Involuntarily Covenant shuddered. He could be so easily foiled. “I’m going to do something almost as crazy as Joan. And I need you with me. You just saved my life, but you aren’t done.” In darkness, he spread his hands to show the Humbled that he was helpless. “If you don’t want to do it, that’s your right. I won’t blame you. But I need you with me.”
He had always needed companions. Friends. People who cared about him and loved the Land.
For a long moment, the Humbled did not move. They may have been arguing with each other; debating the exigencies of their chosen role. Then they appeared to nod: without light, Covenant could not be sure.
Clyme came forward. “I will lead while Branl wards your back. The Haruchai have no knowledge of this snare. Those Bloodguard who ventured here did not return, apart from Korik, Sill, and Doar, who revealed naught. But our perceptions exceed yours. We will search out a clearing or open place, according to your desires.”
Instead of thanking the Humbled again, Covenant rested his halfhand in acknowledgment on Clyme’s shoulder. After that, he simply followed.
Joan would try to kill him. She had no choice. Long ago, she had betrayed herself as well as him by turning her back. The same future could not hold them both.
The cleft seemed to wander aimlessly, as if it had lost its way. Night had settled over the Shattered Hills. In the dark, Covenant could barely discern Clyme’s shape ahead of him. He stumbled on the rough ground, caught the toes of his boots on loose rocks. But he had unforgiving surfaces to guide him on either side, the Humbled to shepherd him. And overhead the first dim hint of stars blinked in a narrow slit of sky like a path. When he missed his footing, he recovered his balance and went on.
At intervals, he passed black holes in the bases of the walls, gaps that may have been small caves leading to tunnels. Each opening increased his tension: he expected skest. But he felt no hint of the creatures; smelled nothing except age and emptiness, the stagnant musk of departed immiseration. For some reason, turiya Herem was holding back. The Raver had some other ambush in mind.
Ahead of Covenant, Clyme came to a fracture that bisected the cleft at a sharp angle. Off to the left, Covenant detected a vague impression of skest; a residual fetor. Instead of continuing along the cleft, Clyme turned to the right, almost doubling back on his course. Trailed by Covenant and then Branl, he strode into the dark, steadfast in his certainty.
Here the way was cluttered with impediments: piles of rock fallen from the sheered rims of the Hills; occasional boulders; heaps of innominate debris. Covenant had to go more slowly, probing for obstacles. Damp blood like fire marked the place on his rib cage where he had been cut. His forehead seemed to burn. Fortunately Clyme soon found another intersection where a wider split like a corridor extended in both directions. The Master appeared to consider turning to the right again. Then he shook his head slightly and went left.
Darkness and the height of the walls confused Covenant’s tenuous sense of direction. He could not remember patterns among the stars; and cold stone growing colder filled his scant health-sense. He had no idea whether he was moving toward or away from the promontory where he had remembered or imagined Joan.
Impatience beat in the background of his awareness, an accumulating thunder. He did not question Clyme’s choices or instincts; but he felt sure that he was running out of time. How much longer would the Raver withhold his next attack? During the afternoon, the Humbled had sensed caesures. Had Joan exhausted herself? Was she tired enough to wait for Covenant?
If she struck now, or the skest did, he might miss his only chance to surprise her and turiya—
Come on, he thought at Clyme. Find what I need. While we’re still alive. But he insisted in silence. Without the guidance of the Humbled, he would never discover the space he needed, except by accident or providence.
Another intersection. This time, Clyme turned right into a break so narrow that he was forced to squeeze along it sideways. Groaning, Covenant wedged himself between the walls.
He bruised his cheek; abraded his arms. On an unexpected knob of rock, he reopened the clotting wound on his forehead. He could not feel his outstretched fingers. If Clyme or Branl spoke, they did so to each other, not to him.
Panting in silent frustration, he emerged from the crack into a wider seam. There Clyme chose the left. He strode ahead more swiftly, as if he now felt the need for haste. Awkward on his numbed feet, Covenant scrambled to keep up with the Master.
Finally the seam debouched into a junction where several passages and breaks crossed each other. Together they formed an open space six or seven paces across, perhaps ten wide. Its surface was littered with detritus: old rubble, brittle shards of weapons, splintered scraps that may once have been bones. At every step, Covenant tripped on a rock, kicked something metallic, or crushed a desiccated shape to powder.
Against one high bluff of the Hills crouched a pit as black as an abyss: obviously a cave. Two of the intersecting passages looked or felt as broad as roads. They were too clear to be natural formations. They may have served as corridors for Lord Foul’s armies long ago. Or they might be lures—
Clyme stopped; indicated the pit. “Skest crowd there. At present, they stand in abeyance. Doubtless they will soon pour forth.” Then he nodded at one of the broad passages. “That path ends in blind stone. There we will render ourselves helpless. The other clear way holds more skest.
“Ur-Lord, will this juncture meet your need? Other choices are open to us, but along them we may be readily overtaken.”
Fears thronged in Covenant’s throat. He swallowed hard. “I wanted more room.” There was too much at stake. “But I guess we’ll have to make do with this.”
“Then I ask again,” Clyme said like the voice of the darkness. “What is your intent?”
“Stay with me.” Covenant’s hands shook as he pulled the bundle from his waist. “Don’t stay with me.” Hell and blood! I don’t have the courage for this—“It’s up to you.” Every choice led to doom of one kind or another. He had already been killed once: he did not want to die again. “I can’t stop now. If I had a better idea, we wouldn’t be here.
“Sometimes we just have to take the chance—”
How many times had he told Linden to trust herself?
Vehement with self-coercion, he gripped the bundle in his left fist and began to unwrap the krill. But he was careful not to touch the dagger. Cursing his many trepidations, he bared the haft of the blade; uncovered the gem.
Avid brilliance burst into the night. It glared on every rock, every shard, every sign of ruin. It limned the crowding hills until they seemed to impend over him, stark against the blinded black of the sky.
“At least this way,” he panted through his teeth, “the damn skest won’t attack us until they see what happens next.”
Before Clyme or Branl could protest, he stroked Loric’s lore-cut jewel with the numb fingers of his halfhand.
In spite of the danger, he rubbed the gem until he smelled scorching flesh.
Come on, damn it. You know it’s me. If you can recognize me all the way down in the Lost Deep, you can sure as hell feel me when I’m this close. And don’t tell me you’re too tired. You want this. It’s the only way to end what you’re going through.
Branl grabbed his upper arms, clamped them to his sides. Clyme moved to snatch away the krill.
“No!” Covenant shouted; raged. “Hell, no! If you stop me now, she wins! Lord Foul wins!”
Just for a moment, Clyme hesitated.
Then a caesure exploded to life directly ahead of Covenant, three or four paces behind Clyme. The Master wheeled away as if he believed himself capable of protecting Covenant from the violence of ruptured time.
Branl released Covenant’s right arm. Instinctively? Deliberately? Covenant did not care. He wrenched his left free.
The Fall was big, a tornado of chaos. Most of it had appeared within the substance of the hill. Dismembered instants as devastating as the Worm conflated every moment of the stone’s recent millennia. The force of their insanity chewed the bluff to grit and pebbles, flung scree like a barrage at the sky.
The caesure’s propinquity stung every inch of Covenant’s skin that could still feel pain. Nausea and wrongness knotted his guts. If he could have unclenched the muscles of his stomach, he might have puked.
But he was ready for this. He had to be. Why else had he forced himself to leave Linden?
The area around him was clear enough. He had room to move.
This is your mistake, Joan. Not mine. I’m coming for you.
Dropping the scraps of Anele’s tunic, he clutched the krill in both hands. Its heat was Joan’s fury; but he knew how to bear it.
Anchored to everything that he loved by nausea and stings and searing pain, he ran straight into the core of the Fall.
Clyme or Branl may have shouted after him, but he did not hear them. As soon as the gyre caught him, it swept him out of existence.